The champagne was excellent, and the dinner over which Gertrude had taken so much care was after all thoroughly appreciated.  Tallente, suddenly and unexpectedly light-hearted, felt a keen desire to entertain his welcome guest, and remembered his former successes as a raconteur.  They pushed politics and all personal matters far away.  He dug up reminiscences of his class in foreign capitals, when he had first entered the Diplomatic Service, betrayed his intimate knowledge of the Florence which they both loved, of Paris, where she had studied and which he had seen under so many aspects,—­Paris, the home of beauty and fashion before the war; torn with anguish and horror during its earlier stages; grim, steadfast and sombre in the clays of Verdun; wildly, madly exultant when wreathed and decorated with victory.  There were so many things to talk about for two people of agile brains come together late in life.  They had moved into the study and Lady Jane was sealed in his favourite easy-chair, sipping her coffee and some wonderful green chartreuse, before a single personal note had crept into the flow of their conversation.

“It can’t be that I am in Devonshire,” she said.  “I never realised how much like a succession of pictures conversation can be.  You seem to remind me so much of things which I have kept locked away just because I have had no one to share them with.”

“You are in Devonshire all right,” he answered, smiling.  “You will realise it when you turn out of my avenue and face the hills.  You see, you’ve dropped down from the fairyland of ‘up over’ to the nesting place of the owls and the gulls.”

“Nine hundred feet,” she murmured.  “Thank heavens for my forty horsepower engine!  I want to see the sea break against your rocks,” she went on, as she took the cigarette which he passed her.  “There used to be a little path through your plantation to a place where you look sheer down.  Don’t you remember, you took me there the first time I came to see you, in August, and I have never forgotten it.”

He rang the bell for her coat.  The night, though windy and dark, was warm.  Stars shone out from unexpected places, pencil-like streaks of inky-black clouds stretched menacingly across the sky.  The wind came down from the moors above with a dull boom which seemed echoed by the waves beating against the giant rocks.  The beads of the bare trees among which they passed were bent this way and that, and the few remaining leaves rustled in vain resistance, or, yielding to the irresistible gusts, sailed for a moment towards the skies, to be dashed down into the ever-growing carpet.  The path was narrow and they walked in single file, but at the bend he drew level with her, walking on the seaward side and guiding her with his fingers upon her arm.  Presently they reached the little circular space where rustic seats had been placed, and leaned over a grey stone wall.